What exactly is liveable? If you put all your effort into one game,
you would probably have to sell about 4-5 per day to live off it, well
barely.

Which makes more sense to create and sell multiple games. Trying
to live off one game doesn''t sound pratical at all.

Your right it would be tough to live off one game, especially as a first game will most likely underperform while you learn the best way to sell/market it.

The people living off shareware are those who have multiple products. Do one, get it selling, start on the next. Finish that, get it selling and hopefully you still have some low level of sales from the first. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. Once you have a portfolio of games and you may be able to live off the sales.

Dan Marchant
Obscure Productions

It''s possible to live off of one game. Not likely, but possible. If you have something really spectacular, and you were one of the few people to work on it and get it published by a major corporation (like microsoft) who agrees to give you 5 cents for each copy and they bundle it with Windows XP, you''re golden. The chances of that happening are about as good as you becoming Sarah Michelle Gellar''s boy toy.

You''re best bet would be to make several games. If you save up a stash of cash to live off of for a while, and then make a game, sell it, and while the money is coming in, make another and another, assuming they do well enough to sell more than 1k-2k copies each, you could make a living from it. You might get rich from one game, and another might bomb. In the end, I think a lot of it depends on the luck of the draw. Oh, and cult followings help too.

Looking for an honest video game publisher? Visit www.gamethoughts.com

It''s certainly possible to live very well off one game. Goodsol.com is a good example, living off of Pretty Good Solitaire for many years. They later added other solitaire games including a freeware game and just recently released Pretty Good Mahjongg. But by continuing to release updates to Pretty Good Solitaire, I''d imagine they could have continued living off that one game for many more years.

Although we didn''t opt for the one-game strategy, I think we could have succeeded by going this way as well. The original Dweep game was released in 1999 and Dweep Gold in 2000, but this month Dweep Gold is still our top money maker, despite having published a total of 15 games now. For at least a year, most of our income was coming just from Dweep/Dweep Gold, and it was certainly enough to live on. We may still release a Dweep sequel down the road, but the original game is still our best-seller, so we don''t want to release a sequel until those sales begin to taper off.

We do see quite a spread among game sales. In a typical month, our best-selling game will outsell our worst-selling game by a factor of 20-to-1... sometimes 50-to-1. So if you want to try the one-game strategy, you''d better be sure you''re backing the right product.


Steve Pavlina
Dexterity Software
www.dexterity.com
"Boredom''s Greatest Enemy"
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Earn $1000 - $10,000 USD per month in royalties when we publish your next game. See developer.dexterity.com for details.

quote: Original post by mtaber

you''re golden. The chances of that happening are about as good as you becoming Sarah Michelle Gellar''s boy toy.

Then things look great. I AM Sarah Michelle Gellar''s boy toy.



"Five passengers set sail that day, for a three hour tour, a three hour tour...."

I sold only 1 copy of my game

It''s a little arcade game packet.

To: Steve Pavlina

How come you are able to sell so many game and I never see any of your product been advertise on gaming site like gamespot.com or www.avault.com ? How you do your game marketing ?

Is your product also been sold through Multi-level-marketing ?

lol. that ad for dexterity software is such a joke. 1,000 to 10,000 dollars a month for simple puzzle games. Even if i could get that much money for a puzzle game, i would feel guilty like im cheating the customers. I dont mind puzzle games at all, sometimes they are fun, but there are a lot, and they are easy to make.
Also, I am offended by dexterity not wanting to publish my game just because it is not one of those simple games. What do they have against hard core gamers? Maybe they are just in it for money so they target stupid people. I guess thats ok if you''re just in it for the money. I thought most people in the game industry had other motivations though.

You don''t earn so much money $1000 - 10000. Ask every developer.
The only game that is the bestseller is his own game Dweep.

If you wan''t to make much money you don''t need to develop games software But other software.

The good old days that you can make much money and fun are over

However there are always exceptions.
But the formula of Dexterity isn''t working, that is a fact.